Symbology

[Anonymous User]

Original User: luke.kaim

Hi Everyone,

I have a question about symbology and ArcGIS. I have about 100 point shapefiles. I load them all and they all show up in the table of contents. Is there a way to set all the point data to be one size and color and all the line data to be one size and color? I know I can do this individually, but there must be a better way. I looked online and I did not find a lot of help. Will an .avl file work and how could I make one? Could I use styles? I tried making all the point data its own layer file and that did not seem to work either. How would you do this?

Thank you in advance.
Thank you,
Luke Kaim

Thank you
Luke Kaim (SIE)
Lucas.Kaim@maine.edu
(914)263-7866
"Don�??t complain. Just work harder" (Randy Pausch).

[Anonymous User]

Original User: tereshenkov

Hi Luke,

You might use the GP tool Apply Symbology From Layer (Data Management) (help is here: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00170000006n000000) and run it in Batch mode (right-click the tool in ArcToolbox > Batch). I do not have access to the software at the moment, but it should work.

Otherwise, consider using ArcPy for applying symbology for several layers at once. Some code is available at http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/9614/change-symbology-of-layers-from-within-arcmap and at http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/18814/how-to-change-the-symbology-of-multiple-layers-at-once.

PS. When you are done with the symbology settings, consider exporting the layers in the table of contents to a map package which will preserve all the data as well as symbology in case you'd need to share this outlook of the data with someone else or open data in a new ArcMap document. More about map packages: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//006600000403000000